The disclosed embodiments relate to a medical device. Specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to a guidewire that is inserted into a lumen of, for example, a blood vessel.
A guidewire that is used when inserting a catheter into a lumen of, for example, a blood vessel, is known. When inserting a catheter, a guidewire is inserted into a lumen of, for example, a blood vessel, and is moved forward up to the vicinity of a lesion (such as an occluded part of a blood vessel). Then, the catheter is moved forward along the guidewire. In this way, with the catheter being inserted up to the vicinity of the lesion of the lumen, various treatments are performed using the catheter.
When inserting a guidewire into a lumen, a distal end of the guidewire cannot be properly oriented in the direction of a desired branch at a location where the lumen is branched. As a result, it may be difficult to move the guidewire forward into a portion of the lumen at the desired branch. Therefore, a technology that makes it easier to move the guidewire forward into a portion of the lumen at the desired branch by forming a distal end portion of the guidewire in a curved shape has been proposed (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 9-294813).
In order to smoothly move a guidewire into a lumen, it is desirable to minimize the friction between a surface of the guidewire and an inside wall of the lumen. From such a viewpoint, a technology that covers a surface of the guidewire with, for example, a lubricant layer (such as a hydrophilic coating agent) has also been proposed (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-237621).